To keep service users safe it is vital that policies in a care business is followed carefully, by following the policies this allows the staff members to know what to do. There are many health and social care policies that ensure health is promoted, these policies and procedures are the ‘Manual Handling Operations Regulations 1992’, ‘Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999’, ‘Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations (COSHH) 2002’, and ‘Food Safety (General Food Hygiene) Regulations 1995’. All these policies make sure that the service user’s healths are not affected when they are working in a care business. In a health centre these policies will be used and these polices will promote the health centres all over the country. The Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 looks at promoting health and safety at a caring environment, the Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations (COSHH) 2002 looks at how substances and toxins material should be packed away in settings such as needles should be disposed carefully. There are many accident that can be caused by substances therefore it is important that all substances are put away to prevent accident from happening. The Safety policy looks at providing safety for the setting for example: Providing safeguarding for service users and staff. Moreover the Health and safety Act looks at making sure health regulation are followed in a health and social care setting and Food regulation policy looks at ensuring that all food is stored in the correctly places and looks at making sure that all food in kept in date.
Referring back to my health and social care setting which was in a primary school, the ‘Food Safety (General Food Hygiene) Regulations 1995’ was used as when the dinner ladies served the food to the children and staff they had to make sure that the food was clean to eat because if the food was not prepared properly and the dinner ladies did not wash their hands before serving the food the it will likely harm the child as they might feel sick or start vomiting because the food was not clean before they served it.
In a health and social care setting, there are a number of legislations that are followed, and to make the setting safer for service user’s there are guidelines that must be followed as they will provide safety for everyone in a care setting. Firstly health and safety Act was followed at the health centre this ensured that all individuals worked in a safe environment. This legislation ensured that managers are responsible for their employee’s safety and should make sure that the working environment is safe. It is the manager’s responsibility that the staffs are kept safe; in order to provide safety for the staff a risk assessment may be carried out as the risk assessment will make sure that the working environment is safe for all staff to work on. Furthermore, CRB may be used on staff. This is to make sure that the staff working in the health centre has no criminal record. This again is the manager’s job to make sure that he has no pedophile working in the practice. In my work experience if an individual wanted to apply for a job in the school they had to be CRB checked so that they do not have any record of criminal offence.
The Act that promotes security in a health centre and these were the following Complaint policy, Fire evacuation policy, Behaviour policy, Security policy , and Data protection act. This entire Act’s were designed to promote security in a health centre. The complaint policy was an act designed to respect the service users , if service users felt that their data is not being protected or felt that the health centre was not offering them what they needed then they would use the complain policy. Moreover, the fire evacuation is a policy that should be designed in all settings this policy allowed security and safety for individuals, for example: if a fire occurred at the health centre then this policy would aid individual to support them with what to do when a fire occurs. In my work experience there was a fire policy that was used if a fire occurred, the was an alarm that would alert the staff members in the school if there was a fire and this would make the children get out the building and the staff would have to a head count by checking on a register.
Another policy that ensured safety for staff and service users was behaviour policy. Behaviour policy looked at individual’s behaviour and if someone performed negative behaviour against one of the staff or the service users then action would be taken with this policy. The health centre had a policy for behaviour and if negative behaviour was performed then strong action would be taken. Furthermore, data protection act was an Act that was introduced to keep all individuals personal information safe. At the health centre patients document were locked away in a cupboard and information on the computers had security lock which would not allow any other individuals to access it.
Another act that was used was the ‘Data Protection Act 1998’ this act was used in the school so that none of the children’s personal data was being leaked out to others. This act made sure that all personal data was safe from being leaked out.